A simple science experiment with lemons

I got this simple science experiment from The snails trail a great pre school blog that I follow.

What you need:

2 Lemons, baking soda and liquid soap

Apparently, there is some suggestion that if you roll a lemon and squash it a little, before squeezing, the extraction of juice is easier, and you get more...we set out to find if this was true.

Experiment 1.

Using the instruction sheet prepared my momma snail (see link above), Henry got about trying to figure out what we needed to do this

experiment.

As a bit of fun, I dressed him in one of Kevin's old white work shirts and he wore a pair of Kevin's reading glasses as goggles!

I cut the first lemon in half, then Henry got

squeezing "pretty hard...mummy you do it" was Henry's answer. So i squeezed

all I could and got about 1fluid oz of juice.

Henry then rolled and squashed the second lemon, after which i cut it in half. Henry once again got squeezing....so i asked "is this any easier"...he replied "no its harder!" so much for the hypothesis of this experiment! It was pretty hard for him to squeeze the lemons, so once again i finished the squeezing and Henry recorded his observations....

There was a tiny amount more squeezed from the rolled lemon. But it was just as hard to squeeze both.

Experiment 2.

The second experiment was a little more exciting, as we promised Henry an explosion of sorts!

This time we were going to see whether we could create lemon suds!

To start with i had Henry make a prediction about what was going to happen and record that idea. He thought there would be bubbly lemon juice.

With daddy's help we got started on this one.

We placed 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a glass, added a teaspoon of washing up liquid, then poured in the juice from one of the lemons.

Quickly stirring, Henry's excitement grew quite quickly as the bubbles and froth headed towards the top of the glass and then over flowed!

Daddy, ever the scientist wanted to see what happened with a tablespoon of each of the ingredients and a whole lot of lemon juice...the result, a table covered in white frothy bubbles and a giggling Henry....boys will be boys!

The data sheets from the experiment

Mr or Mrs Cress Head!

Today, six of Henry's 3-4 year old friends completed this fun activity. This is one from my childhood that is considered by some to be a "must do" before you reach 10 yrs old!

Incorporating a craft project, science, and fine motor skills, kids learn without even realising it.

What you will need

Egg shell or top half of a plastic Easter egg (the type used for Easter egg hunts)

Cress seeds

Cotton wool

Decorating materials (we used stick on stuff, but you can just use felt pens on egg shells).

Small container for easy water pouring

Egg cup or something similar to hold the project safely.

Having completed this many times before i made my own way through the project, but for a comprehensive outline and more info check out this great web page.

www.planet-science.com/parents/easter_pdfs/cress+foil.pdf

Firstly i had Henry and all the other kids decorate their eggs. We used plastic egg halves as we had plenty left over from Easter and they are less fragile for small hands. We used googly eyes, felt and sticky foam bits for extra fun. But on egg shells you can easily just use felt pens.

Next, we put cotton wool inside the egg shell, and added water. No science here, just keep pouring till the cotton wool is saturated. Using a small jug, even the

smallest kids were able to water their own eggs.

Next i measured out cress seeds into a small pot, which allowed the kids to put their own seeds onto the cotton wool with very little intervention. Some just tipped the lot on top then spread them with fingers, others carefully places seeds a few at a time into the egg shell - fantastic for fine motor skills.

We will continue to water the cress seeds for the next few days, and look forward to a full head of cress sprouting in a few days time.

FYI, none of my friends in USA knew of cress. You could use fast growing wheat or cat grass instead and have a grass head instead of a cress head if you can not get hold of cress seeds.